Etymology 1
From Proto-Indo-European *sinos; akin to Albanian gji (“breast, bosom”).[1]
The mathematical sense ‘chord of an arc, sine’ was introduced in the 12th century by Gherardo of Cremona as a semantic loan from Arabic جَيْب (jayb, “chord, sine”) (ultimately a loan from Sanskrit ज्या (jyā, “bowstring”)) by confusion with جَيْب (jayb, “bosom, fold in a garment”).
Noun
sinus m (genitive sinūs); fourth declension
- (chiefly poetic) a bent surface; a curve, fold, hollow
- (literal) the hanging fold of a toga over the breast; a pocket, lap
- Synonym: gremium
- (transferred sense)
- a purse, money, which was carried in the bosom of the toga
- (poetic) a garment
8 CE,
Ovid,
Fasti 4.431–432:
- ‘comitēs, accēdite’ dīxit
‘et mēcum plēnōs flōrē refertē sinūs.’- ‘‘Come, my companions,’’ she said,
‘‘and with me you all [can] carry back flowers, filling the folds of your garments.’’
(Persephone and her attendants wander away from the protection of her mother Ceres and the other matrons prior to Persephone’s abduction.)
- the bosom, breast
- Synonym: pectus
Beda Venerabilis,
Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum III.2:
- Qui cum sedens ad mensam non haberet ad manum, ubi oblatum sibi munus reponeret, misit hoc in sinum sibi.
- Having nowhere to put what had been brought him when sitting at the table, he shoved it into his bosom.
- (figurative)
- the bosom for love, protection, asylum
- the interior, inmost part of a thing
- a power, possession of someone
- a hiding place, place of concealment; a secret feeling
- a gulf, bay, bight
29 BCE – 19 BCE,
Virgil,
Aeneid 1.160–161:
- [insula] quibus omnis ab altō
frangitur inque sinūs scindit sēsē unda reductōs.- [an island] against which every wave [coming] from the deep sea shatters, and [thus] diminished, spreads itself into the bay.
- the land lying on or a point of land that helps to form a gulf
- a basin, hollow, valley
- (Medieval Latin) a fjord
- (Medieval Latin, mathematics) the chord of an arc; a sine
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Quotations
Aeneid (Pūblius Vergilius Marō) lines 1.160–161:
Latin: quibus omnis ab altō // frangitus inque sinūs scindit sēsē͡ unda reductōs.
English: on which all the waves from the deep are broken and it splits itself into receeding ripples.
References
- “sinus”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- “sinum”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- “sinus”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
- sinus in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
- sinus in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
- Carl Meißner, Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book, London: Macmillan and Co.
- the heart of the city: sinus urbis (Sall. Cat. 52. 35)
- the city is situate on a bay: urbs in sinu sita est
- to rejoice in secret: in sinu gaudere (Tusc. 3. 21. 51)
- to love and make a bosom friend of a person: aliquem in sinu gestare (aliquis est in sinu alicuius) (Ter. Ad. 4. 5. 75)
- (ambiguous) to be driven into the arms of philosophy: in sinum philosophiae compelli
- “sinus”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
- “sinus”, in William Smith, editor (1854, 1857), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, volume 1 & 2, London: Walton and Maberly
Michiel de Vaan (2008) Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages, Leiden: Brill, page 567